Using organic content and retargeting to grow a service business

Executive overview

Most service businesses post content that sells too early, before the audience knows or trusts them. The winning approach is to build awareness with content that delivers genuine value — funny, emotional, or tactical — then retarget the warm audience with ads.

Give relentlessly before you ask, and retarget the people who already watched.

Content that actually gets views

• Value comes in all shapes: funny, emotional, tactical, attractive — all of it works.
• The problem: most creators only post content designed to sell, not to give.
• Your best-performing organic post is your best ad candidate — take what went viral, add a call to action, run it as paid.
• Even a video with 10,000 views when your average is 200 has proven magic — that's the one to promote.
• Humility and curiosity beat trend-chasing: random experiments often outperform calculated strategy.
• Don't delete content that flopped. The cost of the flop is less than the cost of doing nothing.
• Increase content creation time: if you work 50 hours a week and spend 10% on content, double it.

The retargeting unlock

• Run ads targeted to people who already watched your organic videos — they know, like, and trust you.
• Cold traffic ads underperform because the audience has never seen your face.
• Warm retargeting converts dramatically better, even today, than when this strategy was first popularised.
• The sequence: post content → build warm audience → run ads only to that audience.

Authenticity and storytelling

• Authenticity is not just telling the truth — it's revealing your truth at the risk of someone scrolling past.
• Audiences have consumed so much content they can instantly detect inauthenticity.
• Faking it can trick some people short-term, but it loses the real ones permanently.
• Story-driven personal content drives in-person recognition and relationship-building more than educational posts.
• A 22-year-old pretending to be an established agent with a suit and watch fools no one; documenting the real journey does.
• Don't say no for the audience — post it, let them decide.

Live selling and platform diversification

• Live selling works for services: the goal is not to close on the live, but to build brand and start the process.
• Someone watching your mortgage live may refer a family member — the world is more connected than it looks.
• Diversify across all platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat Spotlight, LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube Shorts.
• Check the App Store top 100 daily to spot emerging platforms before competitors do.
• Relying on one platform is the single biggest strategic vulnerability for creators.

Mindset in a down market

• Tough markets are when A players eat — weak markets weed out pretenders.
• Many "A players" at selling are F players at spending; they bought Lexuses and Rolexes during the good years.
• Get back to grandparent-era financial principles: save money, live below your means.
• Humility is the superpower. Anyone complaining when things are hard is, by definition, not an A player.
• Morale problems on a team often require hard conversations about lifestyle, not motivation speeches.

AI and the algorithm

• Everyone who opposes new technology loses; first movers always win.
• AI will commoditise weak creators and make strong ones exceptionally productive.
• Keeping up with algorithm changes is no different from keeping a fitness routine — it requires consistent effort, not luck.
• The way to stay on top of the algorithm is to stay on top of it: read, search, test, follow people obsessed with it.

Being a good person as business strategy

• How you treat people — including staff, mic technicians, and event crew — directly impacts your business outcomes.
• Being kind is not soft strategy; learning how you treat humans will impact your wallet.
• Fake niceness to manipulate outcomes is not kindness — people see through it.
• Long-term reputation with the right people matters more than short-term gains from the wrong ones.